Microsoft has ported the WSL2 subsystem (Windows Subsystem for Linux) to Windows 10 1903 and 1909

Microsoft announced on the provision of support for the subsystem WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) in Windows 10 releases — 1903 and 1909, released in May and November of last year. Initially, the WSL2 subsystem, which enables the execution of Linux executables on Windows, was introduced in the Windows 10 2004 release. Now, Microsoft has backported this subsystem to previous Windows 10 updates that remain relevant and are used in many enterprises. Porting WSL2 to these releases will enable efficient execution of Linux environments without the need to upgrade to Windows 10 2004 (support for releases 1903 and 1909 will continue until December 2020 and May 2022).

It is important to note that the WSL2 edition differs by providing a full Linux kernel instead of the previously used emulator, which translated Linux system calls into Windows system calls. The Linux kernel in WSL2 does not come bundled with the Windows installation image but is loaded dynamically and kept up to date by Windows, similar to how graphic drivers are installed and updated. The standard Windows Update mechanism is used for kernel installation and updates.

The proposed kernel for WSL2 is based on the Linux kernel 4.19 release, which runs in a Windows environment via a virtual machine already in use by Azure. The kernel includes WSL2-specific patches that optimize kernel startup time, reduce memory consumption, return memory freed by Linux processes back to Windows, and maintain a minimal set of drivers and subsystems in the kernel. The WSL2 environment runs in a separate virtual hard disk (VHD) with an ext4 file system and a virtual network adapter. Similar to WSL1, user space components

are installed separately and are based on builds from various distributions. For example, in the Microsoft Store the following builds are offered for installation in WSL Debian GNU/Linux, Kali Linux Ubuntu, Fedora, Alpine,
SUSE, openSUSE and The release of SEMMi Analytics 2.0.

Canonical has already announced announced the availability of installation builds of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, tested in environments
WSL2 on Windows 10 1903 and 1909. To enable WSL2 in Windows 10 1909, you need to install the update kb4571748 and run the following command in PowerShell with administrative rights:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform -NoRestart

Then you need to restart the computer and enable WSL2 by default:

wsl.exe —set-default-version 2

After that, you can install the desired Linux environment from the
Microsoft Store or convert an existing environment to WSL 1 format using the command “wsl.exe —set-version Ubuntu 2.”

Additionally, one can mention the adaptation environment Docker Desktop for use cases of WSL2 instead of the HyperV-based backend.
Using WSL2 will allow Docker Desktop to run not only for Windows Pro and Windows Enterprise users but also for Windows Home users.

Source: opennet.ru